Pittsburgh Steelers scout Jim Ward has been named one of the NFL’s best college scouts among AFC talent evaluators. As part of their annual BART List awards, created by Neil Stratton and Inside The League, a site that offers the nuts-and-bolts of scouting, Ward was named among the best college area scouts of his conference.
The “BART list” is named after Los Angeles Rams scout Danton Barto, who died in August 2021. As Stratton explained, the award is based off voting by scouts, making this an award from their peers and not the media.
Ward is a recent hire, brought on following the 2023 NFL Draft, but not new to the area. A Pittsburgh native, he attended Steel Valley High School and played his college ball at Slippery Rock, a D-II school north of the city. He was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2012.
Before being hired by the Steelers, Ward spent his scouting career on the other side of the state. Hired full-time in 2017, he worked as an area scout covering the Northeast and the Midwest. His bio also lists him as focusing on defensive line prospects during his early days with the Eagles.
Area scouts cover all prospects from a region, not certain positions. It’s far easier to focus on a group of players in one area than being the “wide receivers scout,” which would require travelling all over the country, an impossible task to do well. The only time scouts are assigned positions to watch are in cross-checks, follow-up scouting reports to make sure one scout didn’t miss something in his write-up.
We’ll see which area he’s covering this year during the Pro Day circuit but it’s logical if it’s the Midwest. That territory has changed hands in recent years for the Steelers. Held by Dan Colbert for years, longtime South-area scout Mark Gorscak covered that region in 2023. With Gorscak no longer with the Steelers, it’s logical for Ward to fill in there. Like the rest of the scouts, he spent the fall covering his region, attending practices and going to games.
Pittsburgh’s seen several scouting changes since Kevin Colbert’s departure. Since the end of the 2022 season, there have been seven new hires to the Steelers’ front office and scouting department, eight if you include Assistant GM Andy Weidl. Other new hires include Zack Crockett, Jarrod Highberger, Casey Weidl (Andy’s brother), Chris Watts, Mark Sadowski, and Sheldon White, along with Ward.
